Post-Darwinist

This blog provides stories that Denyse O'Leary, a Toronto-based journalist, has found to be of interest, as she covers the growing intelligent design controversy. It supports her book By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg 2004). Does the universe - and do life forms - show evidence of intelligent design? If so, Carl Sagan was wrong and so is Richard Dawkins. Now what?

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Thursday, April 19, 2007

Recent events in and around the intelligent design controversy

* The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Intelligent Design. When I first heard about this book, I was afraid it would just be another jeremiad from the Church of Darwin (50 more ways to get it all wrong). But a friend tells me, it is actually quite good, and the table of contents leads me to hope so. Now that it has become obvious that intelligent design is not going away, there is a growing market for credible information on the subject. Bad news for combox morons, I guess.

* Textbook example of coevolution disputed: Something must be happening when Science Daily is wondering whether we need a "paradigm change":

It is commonly accepted that phytophagous beetles and their host plants (mainly the likewise speciose angiosperms or flowering plants) have radiated in concert since the origin of both groups in the early Cretaceous. Indeed, this is a text-book example of coevolution and a straightforward interpretation of the forces driving evolution and the rise of new species.

However, a new molecular study by Dr. Jesús Gómez-Zurita and collaborators in the Natural History Museum in London challenges this view. This study shows that at least in the leaf beetles (Chrysomelidae; 40,000 species) this association is apparently out of sync. A time-calibrated phylogenetic tree based on three genes of ribosomal RNA and the most extensive sampling of leaf beetle species to date shows that the phylogenies of both groups, beetles and plants, are neither congruent, nor are they contemporaneous.

Apparently, it is more "sophisticated" than was formerly thought.

* Famous fossil "Lucy" not direct ancestor of humans? According to anthropologists,

Tel Aviv University anthropologists say they have disproven the theory that "Lucy" - the world-famous 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found in Ethiopia 33 years ago - is the last ancestor common to humans and another branch of the great apes family known as the "Robust hominids."

The specific structure found in Lucy also appears in a species called Australopithecus robustus. Prof. Yoel Rak and colleagues at the Sackler School of Medicine's department of anatomy and anthropology wrote, "The presence of the morphology in both the latter and Australopithecus afarensis and its absence in modern humans cast doubt on the role of [Lucy] as a common ancestor."

* Red square nebula discovered:

If symmetry is a sign of splendor, then the newly discovered Red Square nebula is one of the most beautiful objects in the universe. Seen in the infrared, the nebula resembles a giant, glowing red box in the sky, with a bright white inner core. A dying star called MWC 922 is located at the system's center and spewing its innards from opposite poles into space. (A nebula is an interstellar cloud of gas, dust and plasma where stars can both emerge and die.) "This spectacular event is the death of a star," said study team member James Lloyd of Cornell University.After MWC 922 ejects most of its material into space, it will contract into a dense stellar corpse known as a white dwarf, shrouded by clouds of its own remains. The Red Square nebula discovery is detailed in the April 13 issue of the journal Science.

* Turkish Muslim ID supporter Mustafa Akyol has an informative article in First Things on the way in which secularists in Turkey drive the persecution of Christians. He tells me in a recent note that the secularists are also committed Darwinists:

Yes, of course, those secularists are passionately materialist and Darwinian, too... One notable guy who asks for a military coup to "save the secular republic" is Turkey's most prominent Darwinian, whom I challanged for a debate. He is Dr. Celal ŞSengör, a geologist... Recently an army general said, "secularism is in danger, even Darwin is being questioned." The general is Tuncer Kilinc, who was one of the architects of the secularist Feb 28 1998 "soft coup". He mentioned "the questioning of Darwin", as one of the signs showing that secularism is in danger in Turkey.

My goodness. Whatever is the world coming to? Here is a Turkish column about it.

Ironically, the hardest task in adding evolutionary/Darwinian medicine to medical curricula may well be soliciting support from medical students. Although Paul O'Higgins thought a comparison of the brachial plexus to the pentadactyl limb was helpful, not all his students agreed—complaints were lodged that he was forcing evolution on them. That lack of support was also reflected in the participation of only three medical students at the York meeting (albeit enthusiastic ones), despite being widely publicized. It is not clear whether this is because medical students are more overburdened than most or because of a more deep-rooted resistance to the subject, reflecting wider political and religious prejudice against evolution. But evolutionary medicine isn't and shouldn't be controversial, and the best way to challenge prejudice is through education.

In the context, I wonder what "education" means? "Recite this creed or you fail?" The most likely reason medical students find little use for Darwinism is apparent in the story. It doesn't really help them much with real-world patients.

Once the Bible shaped all conversation, then Marx, then Freud, but today Darwin is everywhere.

Scarcely a month goes by when Time or Newsweek doesn’t have a cover article on how our genes shape everything from our exercise habits to our moods. Science sections are filled with articles on how brain structure influences things like lust and learning. Neuroscientists debate the existence of God on the best-seller lists, while evolutionary theory reshapes psychology, dieting and literary criticism. Confident and exhilarated, evolutionary theorists believe they have a universal framework to explain human behavior.

[ ... ]

According to this view, human beings, like all other creatures, are machines for passing along genetic code. We are driven primarily by a desire to perpetuate ourselves and our species.

. You have to sign in for this article, which is an interesting and quite supportive look at the sheer vulgarity of the materialism that now drives popular culture.

New York Times: On Benedict XVI

Benedict XVI is the pope who made clear that the Catholic Church can accept evolution but not Darwinism (unguided evolution). Here's an article in the New York Times by Russell Shorto on Benedict's life and times that, amazingly, is not really a hatchet job:

As a longtime university professor, the pope is well known for his collegiality, his reaching out to, and exchanging ideas with, a broad spectrum of Catholics as well as with nonbelievers. This may explain why, despite the fact that his core conservative convictions are unchanged, he has managed to get many left-leaning church figures to rally around his central focus. Notker Wolf, abbot primate of the worldwide Benedictine order, himself a Bavarian who has known the pope for decades, was critical at the start, based on Ratzinger’s actions in his previous job. But Wolf, too, was won over. As we sat in the serene Sant’Anselmo monastery on the Aventine Hill in Rome, which serves as the headquarters of the Benedictines, he distilled the pope’s core message for me this way: “Western society has become detached from the roots of its creator. This is the basic view of the pope, and it is my view also. What the Muslims say about the decadence of Europe is partly right, and that’s because we think we have to set up everything as if God doesn’t exist. On the other hand, faith also has to be reasonable - it has to stand in front of reason. I would say that he means this not just regarding terrorism but also charismatics. He says we have to remain sober in this religious way of thinking. The old Occidental tradition has been a fruitful tension between faith and reason.”

Of course, fruitful tension between faith and reason require that you assume that you are not a meat puppet or a bunch of chemicals running around in a bag, right? Oh, and here's an item on the Pope's current thinking on evolution.

Oh, and here's an item on the Pope's current thinking on evolution. Plus, columnist Mark Henderson who, according to a friend, is sure to get these things wrong, says, "The Vatican is growing uneasy about evolution. Although his predecessor endorsed it as “more than a hypothesis”, Pope Benedict XVI thinks it is “not a complete, scientifically proven theory” and has come close to backing creationism in its new guise of intelligent design. His reason: “We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory." Well now, that's definitely wrong. Benedict's predecessor John Paul II did not at any time endorse "evolution"as understood by the Darwin lobby, a fact that Richard Dawkins understood quite well. Benedict isn't "growing uneasy" about Darwinism. He never supported it at any time. All too simple, I guess. Must be a conspiracy.

Non-Darwinian science: Gaian challenge to Darwinism?

The Gaia hypothesis treats the whole earth as an organism, which I think is a very reasonable view, as long as it does not lead to obese, middle-aged Englishmen prancing around naked in the woods. (No view that leads to that outcome is reasonable, no matter how well-founded otherwise.) But seriously, here's an interesting item from Astrobiology Magazine, "Can a biosphere be selfish?", in which the reviewer Charles H. Lineweaver notes that Gaia advocate Lovelock and others raise some key questions re Darwinian natural selection:

On the surface, natural selection and Darwinian evolution are simple ideas, but a fundamental debate has been percolating for years: What is the unit of selection? A gene? A chromosome? An individual? A group of individuals of the same species? An ecosystem? Do ecosystems compete with each other? If so, when one ecosystem out-competes the others and comes to dominate the biosphere, can we say that the characteristics that led to its success are the products of evolution? Maybe regulatory mechanisms, which are now global and seem to have no competitors, were once sub-global with competitors.

Forget the debates with creationists and intelligent designers; the scientific debate about the unit of selection is one of the most important challenges that Darwinism has ever had to face. The chapters of this book pose that challenge by asking, again and again, how could the biosphere evolve to regulate the Earth?

Well, that is an important question, certainly. If natural selection is alleged to create all the life we see around us, it certainly doesn't help that we don't know what the unit of selection is.Lineweaver also cautions, sort of, regarding the Gaia hypothesis:

When we begin to wonder whether our Galaxy is a life form called Galactea, do we become so open-minded that our brains fall out? Maybe this will be the subject of the next Gaian conference. Let a thousand flowers bloom, right in the middle of a cow paddy.

Non-Darwinist scientists: Another one pops up

Plant physiologist Frank Salisbury wrote a paper against Darwinism which was actually published in Nature in 1969. In a 1996 bio, as principle investigator of Project Greenhouse at Utah State University, he said:

Although I don't talk about it much (enough?) in scientific circles, there is another aspect of who I am. My religion is very important to me. (I teach an adult Sunday School class.) There are various reasons, but one has much to do with what I've learned about the universe and especially about living things. I'm not saying that evolution doesn't work, but I strongly doubt that evolution by natural selection of random mutations is a sufficient mechanism to account for the incredible complexity of our living world. (I documented that idea in a paper in Nature magazine, Vol. 224: 342-343, in 1969. My arguments have never been refuted -- just ignored! We have learned much since 1969, and all we have learned strengthens my arguments.) As the years go by, it seems increasingly obvious to me that there has to be intelligence behind it all, not just random chance processes. Living things are the result of design.

And, so far as I can determine, Salisbury isn't even on Discovery Institute's list of 700 or so scientists who doubt Darwin.

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

My review of sci-fi great Rob Sawyer’s novel, The Calculating God , which addresses the concept of intelligent design. And here are my reviews of possibly ID-related films, etc.

My recent series on the spate of anti-God books, teen blasphemy challenge, et cetera, and the mounting anxiety of materialist atheists that lies behind it.

My review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God , my backgrounder about peer review issues, or the evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.

Lists of theoretical and applied scientists who doubt Darwin and of academic ID publications.

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy at the University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment will be accepted if I think they contribute to a discussion. For best results, give your name or some idea who you are and why we should care. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudesby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

My recent series on the spate of anti-God books, teen blasphemy challenge, et cetera, and the mounting anxiety of materialist atheists that lies behind it.

My review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God , my backgrounder about peer review issues, or the evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.

Lists of theoretical and applied scientists who doubt Darwin and of academic ID publications.

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy at the University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment will be accepted if I think they contribute to a discussion. For best results, give your name or some idea who you are and why we should care. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudesby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.